Thursday, May 16, 2013

Staunton,
May 16 – The Kyrgyzstan parliament has passed a law imposing fines on those who
use of Russian in state institutions, thus becoming the latest Central Asian government
to seek to solidify its statehood by promoting its national language at the
expense of Russian, a measure, a Moscow commentator argues, that will have only
negative consequences.

On the portal of
the Strategic Culture Foundation yesterday, Andrey Fomin argues that the Kyrgyz
have forgotten the words of their great writer Chingiz Aytmatov on the ways in
which the Russian language can help his fellow Kyrgyz expand their ties with the
world and to have chosen instead to follow the paths of other Central Asian states
(fondsk.ru/news/2013/05/16/kirgizija-zabyla-chingiza-ajtmatova-20492.html).

What
the Kyrgyz have now done, Fomin suggests, “might have looked completely natural
in 1992 or even 2005,” given that “all the post-Soviet republics of Central
Asia” have sought to promote their national languages in order to solidify
their statehood. But given their experiences, what Bishkek has done appears
somewhat strange.

Tajikistan
introduced restrictions on the use of Russian in 2009-2010 even though so many
of its people have become gastarbeiters in the Russian Federation and “the
business sector of the republic functions primarily in Russian. As a result, the
Moscow writer says,,Dushanbe backed down and restored Russian to its earlier
status as “the language of inter-ethnic communication.”

Uzbekistan
followed a similar trajectory. In its 1995 constitution and 2004 language law,
that country made no reference to a special status for Russian. Moreover, it
made what Fomin calls “a fatal mistake” by deciding to replace the
Cyrillic-based alphabet with a Latin script, a move that he says threw the
country back decades.

Turkmenistan
did not give Russian a special status in its constitution, Fomin continues, but
despite that, Ashgabat has pursued a more or less balanced approach about its
use. Thus, “it did not occur to anyone there to fine Turkmen officials for ‘insufficient
mastery of the state language.” Instead, it promoted Russian instruction in
secondary and higher education.

And
Kazakhstan, after having given Russian an official status in its 1995
Constitution, required in 2006 the use of Kazakh alone in five oblasts of the
country, although that requirement has been honored more often in the breach
than in reality. Now, Kazakhstan is promoting a gradual transition toward the
Latin script.

“As
we see,” Fomin writes, “over the last 20 years, all the states of Cntral Asia
without exception have passed through linguistic ‘sovereignization,’ and all at
present have recognized that this is a dead end.”Only the Russian language, he says they
recognize, makes the region “culturally and educationally” competitive.

That
is what makes the Kyrgyzstan action so strange, Fomin continues. But there are
two other reasons why it is so: On the one hand, it will be impossible, he
says, “to construct ‘a single social-cultural space’ in the country without the
Russian language” given the enormous ethnic diversity Kyrgyzstan includes.

And
on the other, Russian is needed for what Fomin says all Kyrgyzstan citizens
want “the construction of a new big country [in the form of the Moscow-led
Customs Union] and the re-industrialization of the region.” What the Bishkek
legislators have done is thus “a negative signal about the attitude of Bishkek toward
integration into a common economic space.”

What
Fomin does not say but what is likely to be more important is the following:
Moscow’s desire to maintain the position of the Russian language in Central
Asia reflects its commitment to building a new Russian-dominated political
space there, and that may be precisely the reason why many Central Asians will seek
to promote their national languages.